Compilation film of the activities of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Clips are a mix of silent and sound and most are from the 1920s and 1930s. Some are very brief and have little context. The following description from the curator of the Peace Collection provides what information is known about the film clips, plus some background information about the people and places shown. Related Peace Collection record groups are noted throughout the description for further research opportunities.

00:11 – 00:22 Views of Lake (Lake Geneva?).

00:23 – 00:42 Maison Internationale gardens and Marie (housekeeper?). Maison Internationale in Geneva, Switzerland was the headquarters of the international office of WILPF. 00:44 - 01:08 Lotti Birch and Louisa Jaques [spelled Jacques in film] at Maison Internationale; members of WILPF; Administrative Secretary, International WILPF; Louisa Jaques, Secretary, International WILPF (given dates of Birch’s office, this section of film probably dates from late 1930s).

01:09 - 01:23 [blank edit]

01:24 - 01:25 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom card.

01:36 - 01:39 Jane Addams circa 1922 (wearing same coat and hat as in photographs dated 1921 and 1922).

01:40 - 01:45 WILPF members [Addams wearing same coat as in previous clip]. FRONT ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT: Hannah Clothier Hull (Swarthmore graduate, married to Swarthmore professor, William I. Hull, member of American Friends Service Committee board, Quaker, Peace Collection DG 016); Unknown person; Jane Addams; Unknown person; Unknown person. BACK ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT: Unknown person (face half seen behind Hull); Lucy Biddle Lewis (member Swarthmore Board of Managers, Quaker, reputed to have brought Jane Addams to Swarthmore, became U.S. leader of WILPF, papers collected in Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College); Mary Sheepshanks (British WILPF, WILPF International officer in 1920s); Unknown person. 01:46 - 02:05 External scenes of Maison Internationale in Geneva.

02:06 - 02:18 Gertrud Baer (WILPF international officer, looks like she is filmed at the Maison Internationale, Baer came to the U.S. in 1939, returned to Geneva in 1950.)

02:19 - 02:41 [color] Lida Gustava Heymann and Anita Augspurg (German WILPF leaders for many years, lived together, fled Germany for Zurich, Switzerland in 1933, both died in 1943).

ROOFTOP PARTY SCENE 02:45 - 03:00

02:45 Rooftop event, (probably U.S. WILPF, probably in Washington DC, late 1930s or 1940. Lucy Biddle Lewis appears and she died in January 1941).  02:45 Unidentified woman in dark dress with white pattern and white collar and bow.  02:49 Unidentified woman in dark coat with patterned dress and lining, glasses, white hair.  02:51 Lucy Biddle Lewis (bun, glasses, dark dress, clutching purse). 02:56 Three women talking, one with dark dress, with polka dots might be Dorothy Detzer (head of U.S. WILPF, lived in Washington D.C., lobbyist for WILPF, Peace Collection DG 086). 02:57 Mildred Scott Olmsted in white dress, dark hat, large pearl button earrings (U.S. WILPF leader until the 1970s, Peace Collection DG 089). 02:59 Olmsted with 2 unidentified women.

03:01 - 03:05 [color] Emily Greene Balch (WILPF leader, 2nd U.S. woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Bryn Mawr graduate circa 1880, Peace Collection DG 006), event unidentified.

PEACE CARAVAN 03:06 – 04:11

03:06 - 03:13 Peace Caravan, 1931-1932 Disarmament Campaign, probably the summer of 1931. International WILPF collected 14 million signatures to present to governments around the world supporting disarmament. U.S. WILPF had a “peace caravan” of cars that traveled across the country to gather support for the Disarmament Conference held in Geneva in 1932. 03:14 - 03:43 [sound] Caravan’s arrival in Washington D.C., band playing “My Country Tis of Thee,” or “God Save the King,” and the opening bars of “Marseilles.” 03:44 - 04:11 [sound] Addams announces the work of the peace caravan and collection of signatures. Women next to Addams, left to right: Katherine Devereux Blake (peace activist, educator, worked with Women’s Peace Society and WILPF. Her mother was the famous 19th century feminist leader Lillie Devereux Blake, Peace Collection CDG-A); Mabel Vernon (hired by international WILPF to direct the signature campaign, Swarthmore graduate 1906, founded National Woman’s Party with fellow Swarthmore graduate, Alice Paul. After the signature campaign, which was called the Peoples Mandate to Governments to End War [Peace Collection DG 109] Vernon turned the organization into an intra-American group establishing ties between North, Central, and Latin American women through the 1950s); Unidentified woman; Jane Addams (everyone was sure Addams would be named as the woman delegate to the Geneva Disarmament Conference, but President Herbert Hoover chose Mary E. Woolley, the former president of Mount Holyoke, and she became the Chair of the Peoples Mandate group).

04:12 - 05:03 [sound] Jane Addams sitting in a studio at a desk. Speaks about the prospect for world peace. Date unknown, but Addams died in May 1935. This clip is possibly soon after she won the Nobel Prize in fall of 1931, but Addams was not well at that time.

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